Awaiting Lawsuits

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I used to work for a major wireless provider, I got lawsuit threats all the time:

Apparently folks thought:

- It was illegal for us to charge late fees

- It was illegal for us to not give credits for valid charges

- It was illegal for us to not replace a phone (for FREE) that broke after they had it for NINE months

- It was illegal for us to charge monthy service fees

- It was illegal for us not to compensate people for inconvenience.

There were several lawsuits that made it to court against the company, the most significant one dealt with us extending customers contracts without their consent.

[InsanityInc]

When I was working tech support for a certain computer company (think Oh H*ll), I had a lawyer call in with a dying hard drive. She was going to sue everybody even remotely connected with the company because all of her client files were on the computer, and she had not done ANY back ups, and none of the techs would guarantee that her info would be there if she did a back up now. Her computer had a zip drive. She wanted us to walk her through doing a back up, and then guarantee all of her info would be there. Not gonna happen. And I told her so. After listening to her rant, I directed her to our legal department, and told her because of the threatened lawsuit, we could no longer speak with her. Cue longer rant. Still waiting for my copy of that lawsuit, and that was back in 2000.

[SwanJun]

I work at Corp so I get threatened every other day...

My personal Hall of Fame complaint/threat was by a guy who cried discrimination because we do not sell thongs for men in a size 6X - yes, you read that right - 6X.

We have a couple hundred stores and not one of them sell any form of thong (for men or women), be it a butt-crack pair of undees or footwear, we simply don't stock them.

Yes, he called in quite a few times over this issue. It didn't matter how often we assured him that we do not purchase that style of underwear in any size, he persisted. Then I think our VP Gen Mgr got sick of the calls and special ordered half a dozen pairs from one of our manufacturers just to get him to leave us alone.

He hasn't called in since ...

SJ

[MoonChild2007]

I was apparently threatened just because the asshole didn't understand why he had a final bill although he disconnected his service. I explained to him that he had
a remaining balance from a pervious bill. He didn't want to hear it. I explained to him that we billed him a month behind, don't ask, I don't understand it myself.
Anyways, he didn't want to hear that either. And that's when he said, "if this goes on, i will sue you". Believe me, he didn't say, sue our organization, sue you "people", he said ME. As if i was the one who printed the bill, sent it to him

This was not going to go on with him threatening me, so i transferred him to a supervisor. There is so much a rep can take.

[chainedbarista]

My personal Hall of Fame complaint/threat was by a guy who cried discrimination because we do not sell thongs for men in a size 6X - yes, you read that right - 6X.

one thought comes to mind: train wreck.

i've never been sued/threatened to be sued or worked at a place that is being sued.

the day will come, i'm betting, when some genius gets their feelings hurt over something and will make that threat.

i can hardly wait...

[Alpha Strike]

*** SP2 w/Clam Cluster ***

Actually, the threat makes you an SP4.

-K'Z'K (SP5, recipient of revenge picket, real name listed in ScienoSitter)

Since I don't have l337 hax0r sk1llz, can one of you two tell me what those mean?

^-.-^

So how exactly does "lost freight" work? I mean how does freight become "lost" and then how does your company get involved?

[Nekojin]

Since I don't have l337 hax0r sk1llz, can one of you two tell me what those mean?

The Scientologists have a rating system for people who are critical of the Scientology cult. SP is short for Suppressive Person, and the number indicates a degree of severity.

There's a complete list of what the SP levels are here.

So how exactly does "lost freight" work? I mean how does freight become "lost" and then how does your company get involved?

"Lost Freight" is things that stop in Customs and aren't claimed, for the most part. This can be for any reason - refused due to production defect, bad delivery address, etc. US Customs then goes through a rather lengthy procedure to declare those items, "Lost or Abandoned," claims ownership of them, and auctions them off.

In other words, the US Government has declared that those items are legally the property of whoever wins the auction.

[Xieg]

Still waiting on a couple lawsuits here. I know I have posted about one, and am pretty sure in regards to the other.

The first one was a lady threatening to sue me because she was refusing to go through the proper channels to get replacement parts for her bed. Threatened to sue me because she was going to set up the broken bed, and was expecting her dog to get hurt when he fell all of three inches.

The other one was this guy from Guatemala who knew the banking system well, as he explained what the problem was to me with perfect detail, but still made a dumb decision when ordering. So he has a lot of money tied up. He spent nearly an hour, on long distance, threatening to sue. Yeah that worked out well for him.

[Difdi]

Actually, the threat makes you an SP4. Congratulations!

*Digs through OLD files*

Hmm, so it does. Back in the day though, I never got above SP2. Since then though, I've dealt with a couple Scientologists directly, and said things that probably counted as psychological warfare to them, based on those years-ago experiences.

One threatened lawsuit was over certain "vital, confidential church data" stored on a hard drive of a computer they had brought in for repairs. I personally, my boss, and "every other employee" were verbally threatened with a lawsuit if we didn't jump the repair queue just for them. We offered to remove the drive and hand it to them, but the idea of us physically touching their data gave them the heebie-jeebies and a lawsuit threat followed in the boss's email the next day. The queue had actually gotten around to their computer the day we offered to pull the drive for them, but it was closing time, so we left it for a day. So while we didn't bow to their wishes, it looked to them like we did. I gathered it was someone's personal system, not an actual org computer; I have no idea what was on it, but given the level of reaction...darned ethics and morals...

The other was laundry day...I happened to walk past the local org carrying a basket of laundry to the laundromat, wearing an OLD t-shirt that I once wore to an org protest (with a pricelist (excuse me, fixed donation list, heh) of "services"), and was Confronted over the shirt. Again, I said some psych-warefareish things, and lawsuit threats followed (from no less a personage than someone in a cheap suit and briefcase).

-K'Z'K (SP5, recipient of revenge picket, real name listed in ScienoSitter)

[Primer]

I've never had anyone threaten to sue me, but I have had one threaten to kill me. When I worked (drive-through) at the bank, if I did not know somebody, I'd require ID for cash back. One guy had no ID, but managed to get one of the other tellers to make withdrawals for him. I refused. He threatened to kill me :: I still refused. I made sure security walked me in at the end of the shift!

[Mango]

I've only been threatened with a lawsuit once. I used to build websites. I had a procedure that worked fairly well. The site would get built and installed on my own web server. The client could demo the site for as long as they wanted, offer feedback and suggestions, and generally make sure everything was as they asked for. Once they were happy, they would pay, and only then I would attach www.theirname.com to the site so that they could use it.

I built a really nice site for one lady. I was actually really pleased with it; I thought it to be at the time some of my better work. She seemed happy with it. Up to this point it seemed to be a run-of-the-mill job, so I sent off an invoice.

Client goes absolutely APE.

I did get her calmed down enough to figure out what was going on. For some reason, she was convinced she'd already paid me. I double-checked my records to be on the safe side but found no record of any payment from her. Client informed me under no uncertain terms that I would not be receiving "further" payment. Well, it happens. Unfortunately, but it happens. I suppose I could have sued her, but given the amount of time I had put into her site, which wasn't much, and the cost involved, I just didn't see it as worth it.

So I took her site offline and forgot about it.

Until she noticed.

My pager started vibrating so much it could have been mistaken for some other battery-powered device that vibrates.

Her messages got increasingly vulgar, and the population of swear words increased with each page.

At the end of a rather large spike of pages came the threat of a lawsuit. I was actually kind of proud to have joined the club. She said she would be talking to a lawyer the next day.

I admit I was worried slightly. I became less and less worried each day that passed. Because each day brought a new message that said if I did not return her calls she would be talking to a lawyer "the next day". Never that day, but always "the next day".

I was actually hoping for some sort of dramatic ending to the story. There was none. After a week, the calls started getting less and less frequent and eventually stopped. I never even heard from her lawyer. I still have no idea what she was trying to achieve. Was she trying to scare me into working for free? Was she trying to get out of paying?

The final message from her claimed that she would be telling as many people as possible about this, that the industry was a small one, and that I should expect my reputation to be ruined. I have NEVER had any trouble getting work, either before or since.

I just chalked it up to a lesson in being more careful who my clients are

[Hello Kitty]

My former employer was sued by the Church of Scientology, it was settled out of court. We had a special number to transfer any calls from them, but I never heard of anybody getting such a call. Ironically, we later merged with another bigger company that was founded by a scientologist.

[Andara Bledin]

"Lost Freight" is things that stop in Customs and aren't claimed, for the most part. This can be for any reason - refused due to production defect, bad delivery address, etc. US Customs then goes through a rather lengthy procedure to declare those items, "Lost or Abandoned," claims ownership of them, and auctions them off.

In other words, the US Government has declared that those items are legally the property of whoever wins the auction.

Our favorite lost freight items are things that are from some major aerospace corp to some part of the military or vice versa. Most of the time, they have clear labels and there is no discernible reason that they weren't delivered, so it had to be a customs issue. You'd think they'd have that part down, you know?

^-.-^

[Victoria J]

most of the time I would tell them that the corp lawyer charges $280AU for a consult and even more per hour they work on the case, that usually got rid of them fast. I usually bumped the price higher if it was something ridiculously stupid as well.

I'm not legally trained (though I am currently a law student) but work giving basic advice to people about their rights. For complicated legal issues we refer people on to qualified solicitors etc.

Last month we had some people from a local solicitors firm visit us about referrals. They take a lot of legal help cases from us and basically they are hoping that by offering us some extra help (free basic opinions etc.) we'll also start sending them people who'll make them money.

Anyway - they were trying to push their personal injury services, and got all indignant when I said that when we saw anyone with a claim we sent them on to solicitors. Where there was obviously no claim we didn't.

They didn't like me making that decision. So I got to explain just how bad the bad cases where. If someone identifies a loss, and someone to blame I'll except that I'm not qualified to judge the merits of the case.

I just told them about the guy I'd seen the week before - he'd wanted to sue because he'd injured himself. I asked if anyone else was to blame he said no, he'd just been careless

After that the solicitors seemed more grateful that we don't pass everything over.

Victoria J

[Hello Kitty]

I almost got my employer sued big time. My former employer Company X sold some assets to company H (mainly all the customers and most of the employees, including me) yet kept the equipment and services and a few people to run it.

So company H leases the equipment and services from company X for about a year but company X has totally gone downhill and has lost all the people who know what they're doing, so we (company H) decide to move our customers off to another company.

After a lot of work, I manage to get certain assets transferred to our (company H's) name (these are assets that belong to another organization who lease them out, they were the ones that did the transfer). These particular assets were very important to our customers; we would have definitely lost a lot more customers if we had not managed to keep them.

Company X gets wind of this and their VP goes ballistic, threatening to sue us and the organization that owned the assets. After months of meetings with their VP and legal counsel, we settle things sort of amicably. That was the most stressful 6 months at work ever. I got stress hives/allergy symptoms from that (still get them occasionally). But I did get a promotion and raise out of it, and I knew I was doing the right thing for my customers.